Superdelegates have the opportunity to keep Democratic Party on track

Published 8:00 pm, Monday, March 10, 2008

After last week's primary results, it's clear that the super-delegates will have to decide who the Democratic nominee for president will be. Good.

There's been entirely too much movement toward pure democracy in the Democratic Party. And now the Democrats are paying the price.

Go back to the Founding Fathers -- they didn't trust pure democracy. "Democracy" went back to the Greek word "demos," the common people, rule of the mob. The Founders were much more interested in a representative democracy, a republic. They didn't believe it was wise to have each and every decision made by popular vote.

The superdelegates have a specific and important role to play in the nomination of a presidential candidate for the Democrats. They've been part of the system -- written into the party rules -- since the early 1980s. They are a group of party officials and supporters, some elected, and other party elites who are expected to add professional (that means political) judgment to a decision about who'll be the party's standard-bearer. There's nothing illegitimate about them or how they vote.

If you read that to mean superdelegates are a throwback to the days of smoke-filled back-rooms, you've got it right. Before the Democrats implode, they ought to get some backroom politics into their deliberations.

You can't tell me that the past 25 years or so of party history says the more democratic system has worked that much better than the old system for choosing a worthy candidate.

Many political scientists have been cool to the concept of proportional voting. It makes it that much more difficult to reach a clear decision, to declare a winner. That is exactly what's happening now with Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton. They need 2025 delegates to win the nomination, and each is hundreds of votes shy. The proportional allocation of delegates has made it difficult for either of them to gain a clear-cut advantage.

Proportional allocation of delegates is a concept that Jesse Jackson and other liberals pushed on the party in the name of democracy. With a winner-take-all system, Clinton would likely be well ahead now.

A long, drawn-out and indecisive battle like this isn't necessarily good for the country. It forces candidates to take positions to gain votes that later lock them into bad policy options if they are elected.

Example: Clinton and Obama have been tripping over each other to say they are more opposed than the other to the North American Free Trade Agreement. In reality, they both understand the importance of free trade to the U.S. economy. But they've become so obsessed with getting every vote and pandering to the crowd that they have now said they'll be ready to renegotiate the agreement or withdraw from it. If either is elected in November, he or she will be faced with this choice: Pursue an unwise policy by trying to renegotiate the treaty, or don't -- and look like a hypocrite.

At some point the superdelegates should make an attempt to throw their weight behind the candidate they believe will be best for the Democratic Party. That means, in the end, who can win in November. That decision doesn't have to be now.

The superdelegates, even if they have already committed to a candidate, can still change their minds.

The whole point of having these 795 superdelegates is to avoid a train wreck for the party. At the moment, Clinton and Obama are two steam engines chugging down the track headed straight for each other.

James Klurfeld is a professor of journalism at Stony Brook University.